Privacy Policy

Family Matters Institute is the owner of the DAD.info website (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice). We are the data controller and we are responsible for your personal data. Under the General Data Protection Regulation, Family Matters Institute have a legal duty to protect any information we collect from you. This privacy notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data through your use of our site www.DAD.info, including any information you may provide through our site when you set up an account, use the Forum, sign up to our newsletter or take part in a competition. By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 18 years of age.

1.1 Our commitment to privacy

Family Matters Institute know that you care about how your personal information is handled and we appreciate your trust in allowing us to do that carefully and professionally; your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to find, we attempt to make it available on our homepage and at every point where personally identifiable information may be requested.

If this privacy policy changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this page. You can see when this page was last updated via the 'Edited date' at the bottom of the page. If we reasonably believe the changes to be significant, we shall notify you by email if you are a registered user or subscriber. Regularly reviewing this page ensures you are always aware of the information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we will share it with other parties.

1.2 What information does Family Matters Institute collect?

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data. We may process certain types of personal data about you as follows:

Identity Data may include your first name, last name, marital status and gender.

Technical Data may include your login data, internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type and version, browser plug-in types and versions, time zone setting and location, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this site.

Profile Data may include your username and password, feedback and survey responses.

Usage Data may include information about how you use our website and services.

Marketing and Communications Data may include your preferences in receiving marketing communications from us.

We may also process Aggregated Data from your personal data but this data does not reveal your identity and as such in itself is not personal data. An example of this is where we review your Usage Data to work out the percentage of website users using a specific feature of our site. If we link the Aggregated Data with your personal data so that you can be identified from it, then it is treated as personal data.

Sensitive Data

We may request to collect the sensitive data about you in order to carry out surveys and conduct research. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions and information about your health. We require your explicit consent for processing sensitive data if it is linked by information by which you could be personally identified, so if you choose to participate in a scenario such as this, we will send you a further communication asking for you to confirm your consent to this processing.

Where we are required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between us and you, if you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to provide services to you). If you don’t provide us with the requested data, we may have to cancel a service you have requested but if we do, we will notify you at the time.

1.3 How is this data collected?

Direct interactions: We receive and store any information that you may enter on our website or give us in any other form, such as post, phone or email. This includes when you create an account, subscribe to our emails, enter a competition or survey, comment on an article or use our contact form. You can choose not to provide certain information, but in doing so may prevent us responding to you or contacting you. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as responding to your requests, improving our website, gathering statistics and communicating with you.

Automated technologies: We receive and store certain types of technical data whenever you interact with us, typically about your equipment, browsing actions and usage patterns. For example, like many websites, we use "cookies" for the forum area so you can choose to have your log in information remembered for your next visit, and we obtain certain types of information when your web browser accesses DAD.info. You are able to adjust your cookie settings in your browser and a number of companies offer utilities designed to help you visit websites anonymously - we want you to be aware that these tools exist.

Third parties: We might receive information about you from other sources. or we may use third parties to store and/or process your data. The ways in which we do this are:

Server hosting provider, used to host our website and all the content on it so we can run DAD.info

Content Management System provider, used to collect your contact form enquiries and competition entries

Google Analytics, enabling us to see what website content is the most popular and what pages are not working

Forum software, enabling us to provide a service on our website where you can chat to other dads, post questions, topics and replies on the public forum and/or send direct messages

Webchat provider, enabling us to provide a service on our website where you can ask questions and get responses in real-time

Google Adsense, enabling us to serve adverts on the website which may be relevant to you and enabling us to generate income as a charity

Email Service Provider, enabling us to maintain an email list for marketing and service communications, send emails, see who has opened them, and process unsubscribes

1.4 How does Family Matters Institute use my information?

We will only use your personal data when legally permitted. The most common uses of your personal data are:

Where we need to perform the contract between us and you.

Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal ground for processing your personal data, other than in relation to sending marketing communications to you via email. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by emailing us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Set out below is a description of the ways we intend to use your personal data and the legal grounds on which we will process such data. We have also explained what our legitimate interests are where relevant.We never use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways unrelated to the ones described above without also providing you an opportunity to opt-out or otherwise prohibit such unrelated uses.

Online Account / Forum Registration:

Your name and email address is collected in order for you to be registered with an account. This is so that you can use the Forum, a free service that we provide (the legal basis being performance of a contract with you). We limit the amount of personal data you have to provide and you are encouraged to use an anonymous username.

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account. Please take precautions to protect your account details and contact us immediately or request a change to your password if you believe there has been any unauthorised use of your account.

There are a number of opportunities for you to post user generated content (UGC) to the Forum including by interacting with other users. By using the service you accept that the content you post is in the public domain. We are not responsible and accept no liability for UGC.

You understand that we do not investigate the backgrounds of any users or check the information provided by its users. You agree to take all necessary precautions in all interactions with other users, particularly if you decide to communicate outside the Forum or meet in person. We shall have no liability to you whatsoever in relation to your interactions with other users of the Forum.

Should there be a need to communicate to you regarding your account and/or the forum, this will be done via the email provided, the lawful basis of which will depend on the nature of the communication, most likely a legal obligation or legitimate interest. Note that this excludes marketing communications which require your explicit consent.

The Forum uses cookies for registration and maintaining your preferences. This includes enabling your log in information to be remembered for your next visit, should you choose to, plus keeping the forum settings in the format that you requested.

Livechat Service: your name and email address are collected for the purpose of being able to identify your chat transcript should you follow up with an enquiry and/or should the connection be lost during your chat. (We deem the legal basis of this to be performance of a contract with you)

Competition Entries: your name and email address are collected for the purpose of being able to select a competition winner. We will only use your information to contact you if you have won the competition. The competition forms contain a separate checkbox should you wish to subscribe to marketing communications. (We deem the legal basis of this to be performance of a contract with you)

To manage our relationship with you, which includes notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (a legal obligation) and/or asking you to leave a review or provide feedback (for our legitimate interests, to help us improve). In these examples quoted we would contact you using the information you have provided

To deliver relevant content and advertisements to you and measure and understand the effectiveness of our advertising (the legitimate interests being to understand the interests of our users, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy)

To use data analytics to improve our website products/servives, marketing, customer relationships and experiences (the legitimate interests being to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our site updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)

To administer and protect our business and our site including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data. This is deemed necessary for our legitimate interests for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise

Family Matters Institute may take such action as we deem appropriate to deal with any information sent to Family Matters Institute of unsuitable content, including suspending or cancelling your account, restricting your access to DAD.info, or commencing legal proceedings against you. Family Matters Institute may use your personal information to stop such behaviour. Where Family Matters Institute reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach of any of the laws of United Kingdom, we may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, school e-mail/Internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.

Marketing communications

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have:

requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us; or

if you provided us with your details and ticked the box at the point of entry of your details for us to send you marketing communications; and

in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by emailing us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Anonymous use of your data

Family Matters Institute use non-identifying and aggregate information to better design our website. For example, we may tell an advertiser that X number of individuals visited a certain area on our website, or that Y number of men and Z number of women filled out our registration form on the forum, but we would not disclose anything that could be used to identify those individuals. When running surveys, we are voluntarily looking to collect some demographics information. This will always be used in a non-identifying manner. The DAD.info site is about helping a range of fathers, not just one particular segment of society. DAD.info receive funding from the DfE (Department for Education) and we need to show statistics to them about the range of people using our site / forum. This activity is therefore deemed as a legitimate interest, in order for us to provide necessary information to our funders.

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal data for a purpose unrelated to the purpose for which we collected the data, we will notify you and we will explain the legal ground of processing. We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

1.5 Data Security and Retention

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have also put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes. In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information. In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

1.6 Can I find out what personal information Family Matters Institute holds about me?

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These include the right to:

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

1.7 How does Family Matters Institute use cookies?

Cookies are pieces of data created when you visit some websites, and stored in the cookie directory of your computer. Information supplied by cookies can help us to analyse the profile of our visitors and help us to provide you with a better user experience. Cookies are created on your computer when you visit DAD.info.

Cookies are stored in the cookie directory of your hard drive, and do not expire at the end of your session. They do however, have a fixed lifetime and will be deleted from your system if you have not visited DAD.info within that time.

The cookies do not contain any personal information about you, and they cannot be used to identify an individual user on their own.

You can set your browser not to accept cookies. This will prevent your use of all cookie functionality implemented on DAD.info, but will restrict some of the functionality.

The cookies we collect are:

Preference cookies: For example, retaining the website in your preferred languge or remembering your account log in details if you have chosen to do so.

Statistics cookies: Used to generate statistical data on how users use our website, for example how many users are new users versus returning users.

Marketing cookies: Collect information such as apoproximate geographical location, what pages have been viewed by the visitor, the type of device being used and what website the visitor has arrived from, in order to serve adverts of a greater relevance to the visitor.

1.8 How does Family Matters Institute use log files?

Log files allow us to record visitors' use of the site. We analyse log file information from all our visitors and use it to make changes to the layout of the site and to the information in it, based on the way that visitors move around it.

Log files do not contain any personal information and they are not used to identify any individual patterns of use of the site.

Log files that we refer to are text based (flat files) and not the database we use on the forum. How we use the forum database is described elsewhere in this document.

The aggregated version of the log files are used to provide usage statistics to the DfE (Department for Education)

1.9 What about the other companies involved in regards to my data and privacy?

These are articulated in section 1.2: How we collect your data. We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Some of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA. Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria. Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission; or

Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or

Where we use providers based in the United States, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the Europe and the US.

If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

1.10 Family Matters Institute, your personal data and the forum

The forum area is where you as an individual can post information / thoughts / comments that are then in the public domain and visible to all. It is your choice to put up any information and Family Matters Institute takes no responsibility for any consequences from this.

Private Messaging and Private Forums (if available to you), whilst marked as private are still accessible to others within that ‘private’ group. Family Matters Institute considers these areas as public information and Family Matters Institute takes no responsibility for any consequences from this.

By using a recognised open-source product, regularly applying updates, and using a larger hosting provider (i.e. physically secure site) we believe we have taken appropriate steps to protect your data.

1.11 Contact details

The DAD.info website is Owned by Family Matters Institute. Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: Family Matters Institute

Registration Number: Registered Charity No 1101587 / Registered Company Limited by Guarantee Company No 4746205

Email address:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would be grateful if you would contact us first so that we can try to resolve it for you in the first instance.

It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by updating your profile information in your online account area.